The Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

HALFWAY through Frank Tipler's new book, I scanned the table of contents and was disappointed to find there would be no explanation of the recently reported miraculous appearance of Mother Teresa's image on a cheese Danish in Nashville, Tennessee. That was surprising, since Tipler goes out of his way to provide convoluted physics justifications for similar Christian miracles, including the image of Jesus on the Turin shroud, long debunked as a forgery by many experts. When conventional physics doesn't provide a sufficient explanation for the religious phenomenon in question, Tipler reinvents it.

As a collection of half-truths and exaggerations, I am tempted to describe Tipler's new book as nonsense - but that would be unfair to the concept of nonsense. It is far more dangerous than mere nonsense, because Tipler's reasonable descriptions of various aspects of modern physics, combined with his respectable research pedigree, give the persuasive illusion that he ...

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